"I quite agree with Avice," continued the lady. "That woman hasn't been right, Horace, and she isn't right. Young Bines knew what he was talking about. I haven't lived my years without being able to tell that after five minutes with her, clever as she is. I can read her. Like so many of those women, she has an intense passion to be thought respectable, and she's come into money enough--God only knows how--to gratify it. I could tell it, if nothing else showed it, by the way in which she overdoes respectability. She has the thousand and one artificial little rules for propriety that one never does have when one has been bred to it. That kind of woman is certain to lapse sooner or later. She would marry Fred because of his standing, because he's a favourite with the smart people she thinks she'd like to be pally with. Then, after a little she'd run off with a German-dialect comedian or something, like that appalling person Normie Whitmund married." "But the desire to be respectable, my dear--and you say this woman has it--is a mighty lever. I'm no cynic about your sex, but I shudder to think of their--ah--eccentricities if it should cease to be a factor in the feminine equation." "It's nothing more than a passing fad with this person--besides, that's not what I've to tell you." "But you, yourself, were not averse to Fred's marrying her, in spite of these opinions you must secretly have held." "Not while it seemed absolutely necessary--not while the case was so brutally desperate, when we were actually pressed--" "Remember, my dear, there's nothing magic in those ten thousand dollars. They're winged dollars like all their mates, and most of them, I'm sorry to say, have already flown to places where they'd long been expected." Mrs. Milbrey's sensation was no longer to be repressed. She had toyed with the situation sufficiently. Her husband was now skilfully dissecting the devilled thighs of an immature chicken. "Horace," said his wife, impressively, "Avice has had an offer of marriage--from--" He looked up with new interest. "From Rulon Shepler." He dropped knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known so long and so intimately, with never the audacious thought of a union so stupendously glorious! "Margaret, you're jesting!" Mrs. Milbrey scorned to be dazzled by her triumph. "Nonsense! Shepler asked her last night to marry him." "It's bewildering! I never dreamed--" "I've expected it for months. I could tell you the very moment when the idea first seized the man--on the yacht last summer. I was sure she interested him, even before his wife died two years ago." "Margaret, it's too good to be true!"